The kowtowing of multiple liberal elitists who formerly opposed Donald Trump has a New York Times writer shocked — but she warned their submission would make way for a much stronger opposition.
Michelle Goldberg named several people and organizations she said were guilty of the ‘great capitulation” to Trump — among them tech billionaires who handed him money, ABC News which settled a libel lawsuit filed by him, and Democrats who pledged to work with his new cost-cutting department.
She repeated Trump’s claim, made at a press conference Monday, that, “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everyone wants to be my friend.”
“For once, he wasn’t exaggerating,” she added.
“Since Trump won re-election — this time with the popular vote — many of the most influential people in America seem to have lost any will to stand up to him as he goes about transforming America into the sort of authoritarian oligarchy he admires. Call it the Great Capitulation.”
She even accused Trump’s enemies — including the head of the FBI Christopher Wray — for bowing to the president-elect’s will. Wray announced he would resign when Trump took office, clearing the way for a new pick.
“Different people have different reasons for falling in line,” Goldberg wrote.
“Some may simply lack the stomach for a fight or feel, not unreasonably, that it’s futile. Our tech overlords, however liberal they once appeared, seem to welcome the new order. Many hated wokeness, resented the demands of newly uppity employees and chafed at attempts by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate crypto and A.I., two industries with the potential to cause deep and lasting social harm.
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“There are C.E.O.s who got where they are by riding the zeitgeist; they can pivot easily from mouthing platitudes about racial equity to slapping on a red MAGA hat.
“Some Democrats appear to think that they might steer DOGE in a productive direction and that, regardless, they’ll get credit for bipartisanship. The electorate, after all, has rendered its verdict on #Resistance.”
But, she concluded, their rolling over for Trump leaves a vacuum in the opposition that she said will be filled by something more extreme.
“Collectively, all these elite decisions to bow to Trump make it feel like the air is going out of the old liberal order. In its place will be something more ruthless and Nietzschean.”